No girl should be a hero for getting an education. But for many girls around the world, walking through the schoolhouse doors isn't a right or an assumption: it's a victory over conservative fanatics – some of whom carry guns.

International outrage has been slow to build, but it's coming now – the story has been covered extensively in the media, and girls' education proponent and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Malala Yousafzai spoke out against the abductions. Nigerians are marching in the streets demanding the girls be brought home alive. #BringBackOurGirls is trending on Twitter.

On the surface, these kidnappings follow a theme we've seen across the globe: religious extremists don't want to see girls getting the kind of education that will allow them to enter the workforce, because they correctly understand that education sets girls on a path to economic independence and self-reliance. Education also makes girls (and women) less dependent on men, less subservient to authority and less acquiescent to the social and religious strictures that don't serve girls' overall interests – educated women are more likely to refuse practices like female genital cutting, for instance, better able to resist domestic violence, and less tolerant of discrimination at home and in society.

Boko Haram, the Nigerian Muslim militant group linked to al-Qaidathat allegedly carried out this latest kidnapping, adopted a name meaning, "Western education is sinful." There's no question that the schoolgirls were targeted precisely because they were in school.

But it's also a mistake to assume that these abductions are just about keeping girls from school. The Nigerian kidnappings are also about power and the simple incoherency of cyclical violence. And the response is indeed about gender, but not through the usual lens: the slow build to media attention illustrates the ease with which so many of us view white girls as inherently vulnerable but have a harder time imagining black girls the same way – and black boys an ocean away don't even register.

In February, Boko Haram militants murdered 59 schoolboys. They separated the boys from the girls, telling the girls to abandon school and get married before sending them home, and then slaughtered the boys. That killing spree was just one in dozens of attacks on schools, houses of worship and random civilians.

It's laudable that both the international media and social media users on platforms such as Twitter and Facebookare finally paying attention to a group that has murdered thousands of Nigerians. And it's understandable that the kidnapping of schoolgirls was the catalyst – the sheer number of girls kidnapped coupled with the fact that they're children should have us collectively frothing with outrage. But we should have gotten there sooner.

"When these things happen again and again, you get inured to them quickly; it becomes one giant cycle of madness," Nigerian journalist Tolu Ogunlesi told me. "But I've never seen this kind of outrage before. It does seem like for the first time in a long time, people are deeply disturbed by what’s happened."

Foreign governments, journalists and activists have an opportunity here to push back on a bloody, oppressive force wreaking havoc across Nigeria. Nigerian writers and activists have sounded the alarm about the totality of the horrors committed by Boko Haram – and they're pressuring their government to act. Those of us who live in the United States and Europe can do the sameand demand that our leaders offer assistance, support and, crucially, technology to help track the girls down.

But any opportunity to assist with the larger problems facing Nigeria will be lost if the push begins and ends with the kidnapped girls.

"My fear is that this will become another Kony 2012 where the context and the nuance gets lost," Tolu Ogunlesitold me, referring to the viral social media campaign centered on Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. "Hopefully the girls are all going to be safe and fine. But even if they get back home, it's still far from the end."